About:
- The Lingayats is a numerically and politically strong community of Karnataka.
- They are followers of Basaveshwara, the founder of the Lingayats sect.
- He was a 12th century philosopher, Kannada poet and a social reformer during the reign of the Kalachuri-dynasty king Bijjala I in Karnataka.
- He spread social awareness through his poetry, popularly known as Vachanaas.
- He rejected gender or social discrimination. He introduced new public institutions such as the ‘Anubhava Mantapa’, which welcomed men and women from all socio-economic backgrounds to discuss spiritual and mundane questions of life, in open.
- Nagamohan Das panel:
- Earlier the Karnataka State Minorities Commission constituted an expert committee headed by Justice Nagamohan Das to study the Lingayats ' demand for a separate religion tag.
- On March 2 Justice Nagamohan Das recommended the state government to consider Lingayat’s plea to be considered a separate religion.
- This gave a big boost to the Lingayat community’s demand for a minority-status tag.
- The state government accepted the suggestions of the expert panel and subsequently the cabinet gave its nod to the recommendation of separate religion for the Lingayat community today.
Arguments by Centre for denying separate minority religion status for Lingayats
- Union Govt. said that a similar request was considered earlier and it was observed that Lingayats were always classified under Hindus since 1871 census, the first official census of India.
- Further, all members of scheduled caste professing Veerashaivas/Lingayat religion would lose their status if it is treated a separate religion.
